We care about our environment and are proud to be 'tree huggers'.
Hugging trees?
We love trees as they affect the air we breathe, filter the water we drink, provide habitat to over 80% of the world's terrestrial biodiversity, regulate climate, foster a healthier environment, and planting and maintaining forests brings food and jobs.
We don't want to be carbon neutral; we want to be beyond carbon neutral! As part of our commitment to invoking positive environmental change, we contribute a tree a day for every Evoegy Consultant whilst active on a project. Evoegy also offset our vehicles and flights annually using Carbon Positive Australia's "Quick Offsets" utility.
Carbon Positive Australia's carefully select native species that support natural ecosystems and wildlife, creating habitats that are resilient to Australia’s climate. Learn more about the amazing planting projects Carbon Positive Australia have developed since 2001, planting over 6 million trees across more than 4757 hectares across Australia.
Donated native trees
2022
Evoegy was founded in June 2019. From the birth of the company to the end of 2019, Evoegy donated 141 native trees with Carbon Positive Australia.
141 young trees offset 1.13 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (or CO2e) per year in high rainfall and good soil, and 0.38 tonnes of CO2 per year in low rain and poor soil.
Our initial offsetting gave us great enthusiasm by achieving such a positive give back in such a short time period. With this we were fired up to see how quickly we could achieve carbon neutrality, and to see if we could go beyond carbon neutral.
2023
On 31 November 2020, we had unofficially achieved carbon neutrality with 665 trees planted if in high rain and good soil.
By 31 December 2022, Evoegy had donated a further 1,501 native trees, totalling 2,166 trees since the company was founded.
As of 31 November 2023, the total trees donated was 2,898, offsetting 23.18 tonnes of CO2e per year in high rain and good soil, and 7.73 tonnes of CO2e per year in low rain and poor soil per year.
'Back of a beer mat' calculation
We began, as every engineer would, by doing our research; we were looking globally for the value of a tree, not only a tree, an Australian native tree, in Australia. We consulted with ecologists and with Carbon Positive Australia as the environment in Australia is unique, with different areas having better climates and variations in soil qualities.
Carbon Positive Australia explained that uptake is measured on a per-hectare basis, rather than a per-tree basis. The amount of carbon sequestered per hectare depends on tree growth, which depends on the species and the planting density. In high rainfall zones with good quality soil, it may take 3-5 trees over 25 years to remove 1 tonne of carbon dioxide. In lower rainfall zones with poorer soil, it could take as many as 15 trees.
From this information, we concluded that a worst-case approach was in-fact the best-case. We chose 5 trees for high rainfall and good quality soil, and 15 trees for lower rainfall zones with poorer soil, this worked out as 0.008 and 0.003 tonnes of CO2e/year/tree respectively. This was conservative, but as we don't really need structured validation and we love trees, the conservative approach resulted in more trees and eliminated a false sense of achievement.
Carbon Positive Australia explained that uptake is measured on a per-hectare basis, rather than a per-tree basis. The amount of carbon sequestered per hectare depends on tree growth, which depends on the species and the planting density. In high rainfall zones with good quality soil, it may take 3-5 trees over 25 years to remove 1 tonne of carbon dioxide. In lower rainfall zones with poorer soil, it could take as many as 15 trees.
From this information, we concluded that a worst-case approach was in-fact the best-case. We chose 5 trees for high rainfall and good quality soil, and 15 trees for lower rainfall zones with poorer soil, this worked out as 0.008 and 0.003 tonnes of CO2e/year/tree respectively. This was conservative, but as we don't really need structured validation and we love trees, the conservative approach resulted in more trees and eliminated a false sense of achievement.
'high rain, good soil'
'low rain, poor soil'
We ran a back of a beer mat 'effectiveness' model to test what it would look like considering our CO2 tonne emissions per capita per year for each Consultant and their respective geographical location.
We simply calculated the emissions relative to working by using our consultant's working hours per year, as everything else major would be captured in Carbon Positive Australia's quick offsets facility.
So, does it add up? Well yes, we achieved beyond carbon neutrality as an average at the end of June 2021 with 1,115 trees. Our biggest celebration was when we achieved carbon neutrality in low rain and poor soil, which we achieved by 31 October 2022.
Our results give us a warm squishy feeling; with Evoegy 17.9 (t) CO2e/year beyond carbon neutral as of 31 November 2023 for high rainfall and good soil quality, and 2.5 (t) C02e/year beyond carbon neutral for low rainfall poor quality soil per year.